Product update ...

The main parts of the theme switching system are now in place for Love's Trinity. Babette has finalised another of the requested theme's (a forest glade with artfully constructed ruins and plenty of atmosphere). The multi-choice floor system is in place and ready to expand with themes and general requirements and the remote colour change tables and chairs for the more formal settings are complete along with most of the bugs worked out of the colour and access control panel for the colour change system.

The remaining hurdle which I anticipate will be overcome by the end of this week is a custom rezzing control for the various alternate furniture layouts, most specifically tied in with the colour change tables and chairs. These products allow any of the authorised staff members to rapidly switch amongst the available themes; a typical time to replace one theme with another is less than 90 seconds perhaps stretching to 120 seconds if the colour changer needs to be set up and the tables and chairs deployed.

All together we have bought to production a flexible theme delivery package which is open ended in it's scope and simple to use providing a confidence building experience for the staff and a polished performance for guests.

None of this has come without stress on our part ... the development of the system and the processes that surround it has been quite testing. I think it is however true that both Babette and I have learned a great deal about some of the limits that surround the ownership/security model that Second Life implements and on a personal note the challenges in delivering working scripts for the systems has been immense, but satisfying.

I think it only fair to pay tribute to the LSL Portal Wiki and all of it's editors and contributors. Without the LSL Portal nothing which has been achieved on the scripting side would have been possible. The examples are very good and altogether the portal provides an excellent and flexible programmers resource. I would also like to pay tribute to Babette's persistence with the themed builds. Some of these builds (in particular the latest 'Forest Glade') have proved extremely tricky to bring to fruition with a combination of challenges which include large quantities of alpha textures and the very high standards which she sets for herself in terms of finish and detail.

With at least another month perhaps 6 weeks of high summer to go I am confident that we will have a few more themes ready for the autumn/winter season and it is highly likely that we will be releasing a commercial version of the theme control system in it's entirety. I suspect it would be much too ambitious to take on the likes of 'HoloDeck' systems as there are some very accomplished and well accepted systems in that category ... however none of them are cheap! I believe our complimentary themed products will be appealing to people who are prepared to work with the system and who are happy to accept lower cost of ownership as a trade off against slightly more complex user interaction.

I am certainly looking forward to the challenge of commercialising our theme management products but I am equally certain there will be significant challenges along the way!!

A W E S O M E!!

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